Seeing may aid believing, but feeling aids understanding,
especially when it comes to modeling complex molecules like this binding
pocket of a mutant antibody. Michael Pique and Jim Emery of the Scripps
Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., converted X-ray data about the
antibody's structure into a set of coordinates. Then Allied-Signal
Aerospace Co. in Kansas City, Mo., used stereolithography (SN: 8/3/91,
p.72) to build this true-to-life, copyrighted model. In the
eight-hour-long 3-D printing process, a precisely aimed laser solidifies
liquid plastic at specified coordinates. "It's an easy way to
develop a physical intuition of what a molecule is like," says
Sylvia J. Spengler, a biophysicist at the University of California,
Berkeley.

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